2011 Golden Globes: Nikki’s Non-Analysis

Here I am, only for informational purposes, posting the 2011 Golden Globesnominations held by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with the awards to be broadcast live on NBC on January 16th. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s a completely meaningless awards show by a scandal-riddled organization on a network desperate for ratings. That’s why I opt out of analyzing the nominations every year: because the Golden Globes have zero integrity. Studios and networks who lavishly lobby the HFPA almost always score nominations. Stars win in direct correlation to their glamour quotient. Everything about the awards is geared towards hyping the media’s interest and the telecast’s ratings. Even the small motley group of 85 mostly freelancers who belong to the HFPA won’t grant membership to the real foreign journalists at the prestige newspapers across the world. That’s because the clique don’t want to dilute the financial bonanza they receive from the studios and networks who arrange exclusive interviews about the year’s movies and TV shows. NBC and Dick Clark Productions could clean up the Globes but choose not to.

Even the HFPA’s 17-year publicist Michael Russell who no longer has an association with the GGs sent a letter to HFPA president Philip Berk back in March (and only recently sent to me and others) accusing the organization of “a number of questionable business practices of the HFPA which we have brought directly to your attention this year that need to be changed or they would imperil both the telecast and the legitimacy and integrity of the organization if the news ever leaks out”. But Russell provided no specifics beyond a few marketing and advertising contretemps. Berk responded that these “undocumented allegations are false, and no more than the veiled and unfounded threats of a disgruntled former consultant”. Then again, let’s not forget that, in 1968, the Federal Communications Commission accused the HFPA of misleading the public as to how the winners were determined, alleging that Globe winners were determined by lobby and by who would show up to receive the award rather than blind poll. NBC subsequently refused to broadcast the awards until 1974.

Nowadays, the entire entertainment industry props up this pathetic broadcast because it’s seen as a night-long marketing tool. Therefore, it’s ridiculous for anyone to consider the movie categories as a window on the Oscar frontrunners, especially since only once in the in the last six years has the winner of one of the Golden Globe best film prizes gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars (2008’s Slumdog Millionaire) though that came after an 8-year Globe/Oscar winning streak. So I refuse to treat these nominations with any seriousness. (And if you don’t want that, then for crissakes stop reading me… But do read my Deadline colleagues who will analyze today’s nominations.) The only reason I can think of to tune in is because, over the years, Jack Nicholson has mooned the audience, Jim Carrey has talked out of his butt, Christine Lahti was locked in the bathroom, and other unscripted weirdness occurs at this intimate dinner. Including 1982’s low point when Pia Zadora’s husband bought her best “New Star Of The Year”.